To enable the committee to be assured that high standards of conduct continue to be promoted and maintained. 

The monitoring officer presented the report and explained that Mr Richard Stow, Independent Person, and Councillor Richard Gething, nominated HALC representative on the Standards Panel were available to assist the committee with any queries they may have.  

Following a query from a member of the committee, the monitoring officer explained that she had granted two dispensations to one member of the council upon a written request.    The councillor concerned was Councillor TL Bowes and both dispensations were in relation to the committee meetings held in respect of the by-pass.  Councillor Bowes has a Schedule 1 as she has land affected as a result of the identified red route for the by-pass.  Details of the dispensation appeared in the minutes of the relevant meetings.   In both incidents, Councillor Bowes did not attend the meeting but did provide a written statement which represented the views of her ward.   

The independent person expressed concern the monitoring officer was making these decisions as it was allowing a councillor to opt out of the code of conduct which was a serious matter.   In his view the decisions should be a matter for the committee as an agenda item in order to be open and transparent.   

The monitoring officer explained that there were four types of dispensation under the Localism Act 2011.  The audit and governance committee had delegation for two and the monitoring officer had delegation for the following two: 

·         considers that granting the dispensation is in the interests of persons living in the authority’s area,

·         if it is an authority to which Part 1A of the Local Government Act 2000 applies and is operating executive arrangements, considers that without the dispensation each member of the authority’s executive would be prohibited by section 31(4) from participating in any particular business to be transacted by the authority’s executive

The monitoring officer confirmed that no requests for dispensations under the second bulletin point had been received.

A member of the committee outlined the process used for reviewing the constitution and that this issue could be dealt with at that point.   The next review is due to take place in 2020.  

A member of the committee thanked the independent person for his work.

It was requested that the details of the number of complaints against parish councils be re-included in the next report.   The monitoring officer read out the details:

As part of future reports, it was requested that:

·         the data presentation was in charts  ...  view the full minutes text for item 333